Thank you very much, gentlemen--seeing we have no ladies. We'll have to try to change that, guys.

Thank you very much for your support. It was a hard campaign. I want to thank my mother and.... Sorry, that's not right.

I guess our decision today would be on the routine motions, if we want to get those taken care of. I think everybody got a copy of those earlier. Some committees take care of those at this time, and some wait until the next meeting. I think it's just as well to take care of them. They're pretty routine.

Does anybody disagree with that?

Okay. The first one--Eugene, I think we'll just go through them as you have them--is in regard to the services of the Library of Parliament: that this committee retain a member of the Library of Parliament.

I see Tim sitting over here. I think a number of you are familiar with Tim, who certainly in the past has done a great job for us.

Next is that the subcommittee on agenda and procedure be composed of.... That's the steering committee. I might speak first just about that. I've been on committees where we've had a subcommittee, and I've been on committees where we haven't had a subcommittee. To follow in Charles Caccia's footsteps, he would suggest that the reason not to have a subcommittee--and I used to disagree with him violently--was the fact that you discuss things in a subcommittee, then you bring that to the committee, and then you discuss all the same things again as to what you want on the agenda and what you want to do.

That said, I leave that up to you. We could try not having that subcommittee, or you could make a motion and we could set up a subcommittee at this point.

I'd move that we do, only based on the experience of the last committee. We didn't actually end up meeting that often but set out the course at key points in the calendar year.

I didn't detect a lot of disgruntlement from the different members. There were ways to influence the subcommittee either through your own party or through other parties. It seemed to work well last time. I think if we make the decisions there and then don't rehash the whole conversation at the committee level....

I can't remember how long our subcommittee meetings were, but they weren't long. Fifteen minutes every once in a while seemed to set the course, with Tim's help and others. It seemed to work well.

Under Tonks there was one, yes. Under Charles there was not one, basically because of the duplication. Who needs another meeting? And that seemed to work fairly well, as long as the committee members cooperated.

Last year the committee decided to create a subcommittee on agenda and procedure, composed of the chair, both vice-chairs, the parliamentary secretary, and a representative of the New Democratic Party. That's how it was handled last year; that's the motion we passed last year.